But the word is thrown around, and \u201cgrossly misused\u201d argues Debbie Mirza, author of The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognising the Traits and Finding Healing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople often use this word to describe someone who is selfish and arrogant,\u201d but anyone who has experienced a true narcissist would never use the label so lightly, she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dr Catriona Davis-McCabe, a counselling psychologist and president of the Australian Psychological Society, worries that the term has become normalised.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe often see it on the TV in reality programs where people will call a partner narcissistic, but they are not referring to Narcissistic Personality Disorder.”\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yet a formal diagnosis of narcissism remains \u201cextremely rare\u201d says Dr Kelly Gough, a clinical psychologist and president of The Australian Psychologist Association. It is one of the more complex and contested mental health diagnoses, he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"Illustration](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/c89c786c882cb8865c2e536e6e7bcc13.jpeg\")
Identifying the narcissists among us<\/p>\n
Narcissists walk among us but are poorly understood by the average person.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople with Narcissistic Personality Disorder see life as a vertical hierarchy,\u201d leading American expert Elinor Greenburg says, \u201cwhere the goal is to get as close to the top as possible. Everything is about status.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
There is nothing wrong with a bit of healthy confidence and self-love, says Sydney psychologist Dr Amanda Ferguson.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cA really good, strong self-esteem and being proud of your success, a healthy ego, is a wonderful thing that you need to succeed in the world,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The problem, she argues, is \u201cpeople now have social media access to everything, including AI, many think they can diagnose it<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The diagnostic leap from being a bit selfish and chuffed with yourself to full blown narcissism can be found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders<\/a> (DSM-5-TR) \u2013 a book of mental health conditions and their diagnostic criteria used by psychologists and psychiatrists around the world.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) has a lifetime prevalence<\/a> of about 7.7 per cent of men and 4.8 per cent of women. At any point in time around 1 or 2 per cent of us may meet the diagnostic criteria for NPD, a specific web of nine traits outlined in the DSM\u2019s most recent edition.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s important to remember\u201d says Ferguson, \u201cthat any of us can exhibit some personality disorder traits occasionally, but to meet the criteria of a personality disorder, the traits must be repeatedly observed over different times, places, and circumstances.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n An exaggerated sense of self-importance, preoccupation with fantasies of success, power and brilliance, a belief they are special, excessive need for admiration, sense of entitlement, pattern of taking advantage of others, a lack of empathy along with envy and arrogance are the criteria to look out for.\u00a0<\/p>\n A person with five or more of these red flags can be diagnosed with NPD.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf you’ve got nine of the traits you’ve got full blown narcissism, maybe progressing to antisocial personality disorder,\u201d Ferguson says. Someone with fewer than five could still exhibit narcissistic behaviours but not enough for a diagnosis.\u00a0<\/p>\n Narcissism can present as vulnerable or grandiose, colloquially known as covert or overt.\u00a0<\/p>\n We all know about the balls-out, boasting, shiny, charismatic braggadocio of the overt or grandiose narcissist who creates stories and causes chaos and confusion.\u00a0But vulnerable narcissists are a sub-species that can appear fragile and charming. This is a mask. \u00a0<\/p>\n They are insidious and pernicious, says US psychologist Dr Ramani Durvasula. “Quietly hostile, passive aggressive, sullen, brooding, victimised. A covert narcissist’s tactics only show up when there are no witnesses, apart from the victims.”<\/p>\n They can appear needy, brittle and dependent. \u201cIt draws us in\u201d says Ferguson, \u201cit makes us want to help and protect them.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n But this is weaponised weakness.\u00a0By getting people to feel sorry for them covert narcissists are gathering the sympathy and support to isolate their victim.<\/p>\n Says Durvasula: “Covert narcissism is essentially a manipulation through victimhood”.<\/p>\n Vulnerable narcissism was first acknowledged by the DSM in 2013 and discussion about its diagnosis is ongoing.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of debate and ongoing research about how to define and diagnose these people,\u201d Ferguson says. Is NPD a spectrum? Are traits influenced by culture or social expectations? How reliable is clinical diagnosis?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n However you define it, anyone who has been the victim of a covert narcissist is in no doubt of the emotional devastation they can leave behind.\u00a0<\/p>\n There is a global industry of psychologists and online forums helping victims recover when their lives are reduced to ground zero by someone with this personality disorder.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n “I was a shell,” says Louise, a professional woman who asked to use a pseudonym and says she was nearly destroyed by an 11-year marriage to a covert narcissist. “I came close to suicide.”\u00a0<\/p>\n Another victim, Robert, says when you first start a relationship with a narcissist it can feel magical: \u201cYou’ll think you have met someone kind and generous, a sweet person who seems to share many of your ideals and vision of the future\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhat many victims don’t realise \u2013 until years or even decades later when the truth finally comes out \u2013 is that the person you met never truly existed\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n Instead, they were studying you, learning how to become your perfect companion by mirroring your traits, mimicking your behaviours and flooding you with praise and admiration, says Robert, who also asked to use a pseudonym.\u00a0<\/p>\n When the real person emerges it looks like this: \u201cThe gaslighting is constant. Mood swings and outbursts of anger are frequent. It is a cycle of highs and lows. The narcissist lives in chaos and confusion, and they need you to live in confusion as well,\u201d Robert says.\u00a0<\/p>\n Louise and Robert wanted to hide their identities because, like many victims, they feel shame about being taken in by a narcissist and frightened of the consequences of speaking out.\u00a0<\/p>\n None of this surprises Elizabeth Shaw, a psychologist with Relationships Australia.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The covet narcissist will use \u201crat cunning\u201d she says, and go to any lengths to be in a dominant position, even if another person\u2019s self-esteem is eroded to make them feel better.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey create a new version of reality where they\u2019re always the victim, the hero, or the innocent party,\u201d she says.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The narcissist\u2019s true nature can remain seductively, pleasantly, hidden behind the magic, as Robert described, until a simple trigger \u2013 casual criticism, someone else being praised \u2013 sets off a cascade of insecurity.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey remove the context, erase the lead-up and cut out the things they did or said to push you over the edge,\u201d Shaw says.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Suddenly you are presented as an unstable abuser.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a clever, cruel trick\u201d says author Debbie Mirza. \u201cThey have effectively vanished from the crime scene they created, leaving you standing there holding the evidence of your own emotions.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n But if you expose a vulnerable narcissist and leave the relationship, the smear campaign can begin.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Robert\u2019s narcissist unleashed scorched earth retribution.\u00a0<\/p>\n Separation from his partner led to \u201cabout six months of sustained harassment. My business was targeted. I was falsely reported and audited. I was accused of criminal behaviour and investigated. None of it was true \u2013 the goal was to overwhelm me with chaos and pressure,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMany others joined in, including my friends and even my own brother, spreading rumours, attacking my credibility. It was a coordinated effort to destroy my reputation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Diagnosed narcissist Jacob Skidmore has made full use of social media to build his profile as The Nameless Narcissist. The author and YouTuber maintains his goal is to destigmatise the condition.\u00a0<\/p>\n Skidmore, fast-talking and charismatic, live streams weekly to his followers and is regularly interviewed for insights into life as a narcissist and what drives the behaviour.\u00a0<\/p>\n “I can’t feel good about myself unless people are giving me admiration,” he reveals on his YouTube channel.<\/p>\n In one of his videos Skidmore says hiding true emotions and “trying to charm people through a facade” is not about self-love but \u201cabout thinking we are better than other people so we can feel good about ourselves, even though we still kind of hate ourselves.”<\/p>\n The lack of empathy, he explains is because “we’re so fixated on what other people think of us”.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n “I always say ‘I’m not thinking about you’,” he says. “I’m thinking of what you think of me. We’re so worried about managing our self-esteem that we can’t really even consider the needs and wants of other people.”\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Skidmore says he is so ruled by this need to be liked he is “willing to compromise things that feel somewhat genuine\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n Skidmore is strikingly self-aware.\u00a0He is aware, for example, that his videos on YouTube are the ultimate way to seek and receive attention and validation.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n He is also aware that being a narcissist in the first place has been quite handy in building his social media profile as the grandiosity has given him the courage to approach people and put his videos out there.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt has made me famous\u201d he admits.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n He believes remission from NPD is possible.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I say recovery I don’t mean that I am not a narcissist anymore. I will be for the rest of my life. That is the nature of the thing,\u201d he says. \u201cWhat I mean is that I am not being harmful to others. I’m not lying. I’m not being exploitative. I’m not being disrespectfully grandiose and letting that affect my life. I’m adapting to the world around me in order to be functioning and not hurt other people.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n And although it can be hard to find empathy for a narcissist, you can see Skidmore\u2019s suffering.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis is hell. There is something disgusting inside me that I need to keep to myself,\u201d he says in one video.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI hate myself. But I am better than anyone else. I need to better than everyone around me. My life feels like an act. I feel like shell, a patchwork of traits that I stole from other people over the years. It feels like being dead, emotion is deeply uncomfortable and distressing. Emptiness is safe.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Where does Skidmore believe his narcissistic personality came from? Once again he is reflective. And there is tragedy in his theory: \u201cI was abused to the point where I got a personality disorder and now I am unable to love.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The term narcissism was coined in 1899 by German psychiatrist Paul Nacke. He named the condition after Narcissus, the devastatingly handsome boy from Greek mythology who rejected the affections of others, became enamoured with his own reflection, and spent his life staring at himself in a river.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sigmund Freud brought the label into the mainstream with his 1914 paper On Narcissism: An Introduction<\/a>, that argued narcissism was a normal stage of development. He claimed all children are narcissists.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n In the 1970s American psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut argued, similarly to Freud, that narcissism was a stage we all pass through.\u00a0<\/p>\n But unlike Freud, who had his doubts about whether narcissism could be treated, Kohut believed if we became stuck in the narcissistic phase psychoanalysis could help develop a healthy sense of self.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Psychologists do not diagnose NPD until at least age 30, Ferguson says. “Personality is bedrock by 30. You’re not going to become someone different.\u201d<\/p>\n However, there is good news too. Just as Freud and Kohut saw narcissism as a condition of youth there is evidence that people become less narcissistic as they age<\/a>. The disorder shows up differently in men and women<\/a>. But even so, as researchers from the University of Bern and University of Munster<\/a> found, someone who was more narcissistic than their peers as a child will remain so as an adult.\u00a0<\/p>\n Many believe the more important question is whether the narcissist can even recognise that they need to change.\u00a0Ferguson suggests that the reason NPD is rare is because so few make it to therapy in the first place.\u00a0<\/p>\n Inherent in the problem of diagnosing and being able to calculate the statistical prevalence, she says, \u201cis the fact that the narcissist either won’t go to therapy or very rarely will stay in therapy. So you’re not diagnosing that many of them because you’re not seeing them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Why would a person grow up with \u201cself-esteem so brittle or insecurities so dominant that the narcissism plays out in ways that are destructive to others,\u201d psychologist Ferguson asks.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n It is rooted, she argues, in \u201can unstable sense of self. They are constantly having to fill up that void. It is like a bottomless pit.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In her research Ferguson found that this unstable sense of self can develop in early childhood and is often the result of insecure or severed attachment that leaves a person never feeling safe.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOur research showed that typically, by the age of three, the child either didn’t bond sufficiently with the carer or was held too close and didn’t develop a sense of self because of an attachment disorder,” she says. “That may be why they can seem to regress to the age of a two or three year old when their temper tantrums come on.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Personality disorders are created by a range of factors, Ferguson explains.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n A person\u2019s genetics or inherited characteristics combine with the influence of nurture, how and where they were raised. These influences are further affected by our neurobiology, how our brains and nervous systems connect to form our personalities.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSome research shows NPD occurs when parents are either overly protective or neglectful<\/a> or when they give excessive adoration or excessive criticism that doesn’t match the child’s experience,\u201d Ferguson says.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n She says she often finds evidence of personality disorder in older members of a family that may \u201chave contributed genetically to the person we are trying to understand.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Then there is the golden child syndrome.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\nEmotional ground zero<\/p>\nA new version of reality<\/p>\nInside the mind of a ‘narc’<\/p>\nIs change possible?<\/p>\nBorn or made?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n